


ramble on

by lambheart (sheepishlion)



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: M/M, here you FUCKING GO BEC
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-11
Updated: 2018-06-11
Packaged: 2019-05-20 19:21:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14900492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheepishlion/pseuds/lambheart
Summary: ben whishaw owns a bookstore, and thor walks into it. i don't want to talk about it.





	ramble on

**Author's Note:**

> hey, this is absolutely written for an audience of one person, whomst is my friend bec. she had ben whishaw as her icon on rabbit and i had thor as mine and i made a joke about us writing ben/thor fanfiction and then, because i'm a garbage person, i wrote ben/thor fanfiction. please don't take this seriously. i took it seriously and now i'm three thousand words deep in the stupidest thing i've ever done. learn from my mistake.

It wasn’t every day that Ben wished he hadn’t moved to New York.

 

At the time, it had seemed like a romantic thing to do. New York was a romantic city where romantic things happened to romantic people, and Ben really did try quite hard to be a romantic person. He often stared out of rainy windows, he quite liked to listen to the Smiths, and he owned his own independent bookstore with a punny name. _The Prints and the Paper_. Genius. He had come up with it himself and everything! He’d really felt that he was deserving of a bit of the certain something that New York City seemed to offer all the romantic people who moved there, but so far, Ben had just accumulated some debt and discovered his fear of rats.

Still, he usually felt hopeful that New York was going to deliver on some of the promises the movies about it had made. If nothing else, he’d made a few friends in the city, and his bookstore had recently become quite popular on Instagram, so most of the time Ben felt that he had made more of a good decision to leave Bedfordshire than a poor one. His mother was a different story, but she worried less when Ben remembered to call her once a week, and usually he did. All in all, most of the time, he didn’t regret his decision to move.

Most of the time, however, the bloody Avengers didn’t destroy half the city while space aliens on space alien motorcycles destroyed the other half.

 _The Prints and the Paper_ had not been directly damaged, thank god, but most of the block surrounding it had been, pardon his French, royally fucked. Debris had littered the road for weeks, and by the time it was finally cleared, nobody had much interest in wandering through a street filled with half-destroyed empty buildings and scorch marks and so Ben’s foot traffic had dwindled to basically zero, save for a few teenagers who had become very interested in books on norse mythology. Luckily Ben had moved from a rat-infested apartment into the backroom of the store a few months ago, or else his rent would’ve sent him into bankruptcy. The threat of it still loomed heavy over his shoulder as Ben stared down at his latest pile of bills from behind the counter of his once-again empty store. He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose with the heel of his hand, and let his hand rest there against his forehead for a moment as he went through the breathing exercise his therapist had suggested to him during times of intense stress. He’d been doing a lot of breathing exercises in the past few weeks since the Chitauri attack, and while he didn’t know if he was any less stressed, he certainly had improved his ability to count backwards from one hundred, so, not a total loss.

Ben was busy breathing quite intently when he heard the jingle of the bell that sat above the door, but customers were not so rare that he would need to abandon his exercise when he was only at 63. He continued to breathe and count as he waited for whoever the customer was to approach the counter or to leave again. He rather hoped it was the first one, considering the amount he currently owed to the bank staring up at him from the desk below, but he could manage a few more months at the very least. He had been advised quite strongly against “catastrophizing” by both his mother and his therapist, which he secretly felt was a bit rich considering the giant hole to, by all evidence, hell itself that had opened above Stark tower not even one month ago, but he was always willing to give it his best go. Ben could survive a few more months with no money. 47. 46. 45. 44. 43-

Ben looked the type to be easily startled, all skin and bones and wide eyes, but to his credit he barely even flinched when the unmistakable crash of a bookshelf hitting the ground rang out throughout the store. He’d planned for rambunctious children or clumsy patrons in his layout plan in the first place, after all, so the shelves were spaced wide enough apart that there was no domino effect to be worried about. Nearly half the shelves had fallen over during the attack anyway, so Ben was actually quite proficient at picking them up and sorting the books back out. Well, he was getting quite proficient at sorting the books back out. The picking up part took a bit longer. The shelves were _heavy_.

Ben took a deep breath – 42 – and opened his eyes, dropping his hand from his face at last. He wished immediately he’d kept it up so he’d have something to do with it as he locked eyes with a very familiar face wearing an unfamiliar sheepish grin. He had to settle for hovering it uselessly above the counter for a count of three seconds before not so gently dropping it down with a smack.

Thor was taller than he looked on the telly. Ben supposed that was a result of being constantly stood next to a man in a giant suit of iron and The Hulk, but it was the first thing he noticed. He was taller that he’d looked, and probably had to duck to get through the doorway. Ben grinned in spite of himself at the image, and Thor must’ve taken that as acknowledgement, because he then announced in a booming voice, “My apologies. I was simply trying to –” he gestured with one hand, which Ben now noticed was holding a children’s book, dwarfed by Thor’s hand around it. “Put this back. I was perhaps a bit more forceful than necessary.”

“Perhaps,” Ben agreed, voice sounding meek and reedy to his own ears after the commanding presence of Thor’s, and he cleared his throat before speaking again. “It’s – not a problem. Happens all the time, doesn’t it? Norse gods knocking down my bookshelves. You lot are a bloody nuisance.” Ben moved from his spot behind the counter, but before he could even take two steps towards the shelf in question, Thor had bent down and taken hold of the wood in his free hand, lifting it up like it weighed nothing and setting it back up where it had been. All of its contents, of course, had fallen onto the ground in the crash, but Thor gingerly placed the book he’d been holding on the empty plank in front of him.

Ben took another deep breath. It had been a long time since he’d last – had a date, or anything of the sort, so he couldn’t be blamed for the way he’d managed to do nothing but stare open mouthed at the flex of Thor’s arm as he’d lifted the shelf. Anyone would have stared, he thought to himself a bit bitterly, already imagining the ribbing his friends were going to give him when he retold them this story later. As if _they’d_ have done anything different. Harry would’ve been climbing Thor like a tree by now, he was sure, and if Matty had been here he’d be halfway through convincing Thor to move in with them. Ben huffed, already irritated pre-emptively at his friends’ imagined hypocrisy. Thor’s eyebrows furrowed inwards, concerned, and Ben realized a beat belatedly that his irritation must’ve read on his face. “Really, it’s – it’s not a bother. Gives me something to do before clocking out,” he quickly added before Thor could speak again, and it wasn’t really a lie. Probably Ben could have found something else to do with his time before close, but there were worse things to do than reshelf.

“I insist that I help,” Thor said, and it sounded more of a statement of fact than an offer, so Ben didn’t bother to try to protest, although if _Ben_ had better things he could be doing, he didn’t want to even imagine what was being re-arranged on Thor’s priority list. Thor bent down to pick up a handful of books, looking at them, then the shelf, then back at them with a determined if not confused look.

It was quite a cute expression, Ben couldn’t help but notice. “Um, it’s alphabetical by last name,” he offered, gently taking one of the books from Thor’s grip. “So this one is by Robert Munsch, so it’ll go somewhere on this end of the shelf,” Ben reached across Thor to place the book on the shelf, willing himself not to brush too deliberately against Thor’s chest but doing it anyway. Thor was in street clothes, a hoodie and jeans, although Ben couldn’t imagine a six foot something golden haired god of thunder blending in on the street regardless of if he was in a cape or not. The hoodie, Ben reluctantly noted, was very soft.

Thor nodded, placing the other book he was holding on the shelf in front of him appropriately. He bent down again, returning with a larger armful, and offered a few to Ben. Ben took them with a quiet thanks, and set about getting them in order on the shelf.

They worked in as comfortable a silence as Ben had ever managed to have next to a celebrity – once he’d sat next to Jonathan Groff on the subway and had nervously blathered his ear off about some Broadway fantasy or another, and the experience had taught him that famous people probably didn’t care about civilians, even if they were superheroes. Sure, they cared in the way that meant saving the city from aliens, but if Groff hadn’t cared much about his childhood dreams of the stage, he couldn’t imagine Thor was very bothered about anything Ben could say to him.

The shelf was more than three quarters filled before Thor spoke again, much softer than he had before. “It’s really the Greek you should be concerned about,” he said, apropros of nothing.

Ben blinked, trying to control his expression but failing to entirely hide his bafflement. “The Greek?” He asked, already bracing for some weird alien-god version of racist rhetoric. Not what he’d pegged Thor for, but he supposed even superheroes were flawed.

“Yes,” Thor said simply, turning to look at Ben out of the corner of his eye. He grinned when the confusion on Ben’s face was apparent. “You said Norse myths were a nuisance. It’s the Greek you should be concerned about. Zeus would do more than knock over a shelf.”

A beat too long passed before Ben realized Thor was joking around with him, so he didn’t laugh, but he did return Thor’s smile. “If Zeus came in here, I’d be pregnant with a goose or something by now,” he admitted. “You saved the world, anyway. You’ve got enough green in your ledger to knock over a few bookshelves.”

“But not enough to impregnate various shopkeeps? Alas,” Thor said with feigned resignation, and Ben bit his tongue around some flirty retort, something about _well, I’m not taking anything off the table_ bubbling up in his brain. He refused to embarrass himself in front of an Avenger. He would never hear the end of it. ‘Remember when you tried to pull Thor?’ Matty would revel in saying, as Harry howled in the background, ‘Ooh, Thor, you’re so big and strong, I’d love to see your hammer,’ as Ben would stare up at the sky and pray for it to swallow him up.

“Well, I’m not taking anything off the table,” Ben’s traitorous mouth said with no input from his reasonable brain.

Thor laughed, a resonating sound that seemed to fill up the empty shop. Ben understood in an instant why there had been an influx in purchases of all his stock on norse mythology. He felt an intense desire to brush up on it himself. He also felt about a hundred degrees warmer, but that surely was not related.

“I will keep that in mind for next time,” Thor said kindly, turning to face Ben to hand him the last book he was holding. Roald Dahl. Ben slotted it into the shelf directly in front of him, where it belonged. He turned back, looking up at Thor, trying not to think very hard about how much he liked looking up at handsome men.  

“Next time?” Ben asked, gripping his hands in front of him and taking a tentative step backwards. It had been six and a half months since his last date, and that had been a disaster, and he really did not trust himself to stand that close to a literal god who he was eighty-five percent sure was flirting with him. Leave it to him to say something preposterous to turn this story from ‘lads, I flirted with a god today,’ to ‘lads, I got a restraining order from a god today. Did you know that was even possible?’

“I have been checking in on the residents of this neighborhood. We were more destructive than I had planned, and I would like to help repair the damage if I can. This shop seemed relatively unharmed,” Thor answered, not seeming to notice Ben’s small retreat as he put an arm out to rest on the shelf beside him, effectively trapping him between a shelf and a hard place. “At least before I walked in. My apologies again for the havoc.”

“Oh, no havoc,” Ben answered, a bit nonsensically. “It was really nothing, comparatively. Most places got totally wrecked. I’ll take an upended bookshelf any day.”

“As would I, apparently,” Thor said with a sheepish smile. “I should make a purchase to make up for the time spent tidying my mess. What would you recommend?”

Ben blinked, immediately forgetting every book he’d ever read. He couldn’t remember if he even knew how to read. “Er, well, what sort of stories do you like?”  
  
“Tales of adventure,” Thor answered simply. “Though I will admit, I do not mind romance either,” his gaze swept over the store, landing on the large sign that read ROMANCE hanging over a few shelves.

Ben happened to know quite well that those shelves had more copies of _Fifty Shades of Grey_ than probably the romance Thor was thinking of, and the idea of letting an Avenger walk out of his store holding onto that sprung him into motion. He moved around Thor quickly, graceful as he only ever was when he was determined to find a book, diverting Thor’s attention from the dark covers with the splash of a silver tie.

“I’ll recommend you this one then,” Ben said as he reached the shelf he’d been aiming for, masterfully pulling _The Lord of the Rings_ off the shelf without looking. “Lots of adventure, and some romance if you look for it,” he held it out, and Thor took it with a thoughtful glance at the cover. “Made into some movies too, if you’ve ever got eleven hours to spare,” Ben explained, but immediately wished he could retract. He wasn’t sure Thor even knew what movies _were_ , regardless of the unlikelihood of the man having a lot of downtime.

To his credit, Thor just nodded good naturedly. “If you recommend it, I am sure I will enjoy it,” he said, and Ben felt a tiny bud of pride bloom in his chest, even though he was sure Thor was just being kind. “How much?”

Ben shook his head immediately, holding up both hands. “Consider it a gift. Saved the world, remember?”

Thor frowned, looking for a brief moment as if he was going to argue, but his expression schooled itself into something more neutral. “I will consider it a loan. When I’ve finished, I will return it. You can recommend me another then.”

Ben opened and closed his mouth for a moment, at a loss for words. He was suddenly very glad he had kept Thor away from _Fifty Shades_. He didn’t think he could’ve looked Thor in the eye as he returned that one.

“Perhaps we could discuss the story over a meal,” Thor continued, like Ben hadn’t gaped at him like an idiot for a solid fifteen seconds, “A preferable alternative to impregnating you with geese, I presume?”

“I, I, um –” Ben started uselessly, gesturing emptily with his hands at nothing in particular. He was fairly sure he was being asked out on a date. By Thor. “Goats,” he settled on after stumbling over nothing for a few seconds. Oh, excellent work, Whishaw, he thought to himself miserably. Goats.

Thor cocked his head, smile growing on his face until he was beaming.

“It’s, um. Geese for Zeus. But it’d be goats for you, wouldn’t it?” Ben continued to speak despite his best efforts. “Pregnant with goats.”

“I think I might need to have words with whoever is in charge of recordkeeping for my family in this realm,” Thor said, eyes sparkling. “But we could discuss this over dinner as well.”  
  
Ben smiled in spite of himself. It was a nervous grin, more bared teeth than anything, but Thor seemed to respond positively, clapping a hand down on the book in his hands, startling Ben out of the cycle of anguished screaming in his own head.

“I must be off. But I will return when I have finished the story, sir…” Thor trailed off expectantly.

“Ben!” Ben answered quickly, back into familiar ground. His name! He can’t muck that one up. “Ben Whishaw, at your service,” he delivered in a rote fashion, one of his standard lines to greet customers with.

“I certainly hope so,” Thor answered with a wink, continuing whip-quick before Ben could register what that could mean, “sir Ben Whishaw, of _The Prints and the Paper_. Until then,” he held out his hand, and Ben reached out and shook it, feeling suddenly very starstruck.

And also, Thor had very big hands.

He held onto Ben’s hand just slightly too long, and then with a tilt of his head and a blinding smile, Thor turned and walked out of the shop.

“What the fuck,” Ben said, succinctly.

 

* * *

 

“Of _course_ he asked you out, you tit,” Matty said gleefully, leering at Ben over his beer from across the booth. “You’re exactly his type!”

Harry grinned conspiratorially, arm draped over Matty’s shoulder. “An absolute fucking nerd?”

“An absolute fucking nerd!” Matty howled, and Harry started cackling along with him, both of them adopting a falsetto and repeating variations on a theme. “Ooh, Thor, how big _is_ your hammer? Ohh, Thor, your touch is just _electric_ —”

Ben just looked down at his drink and grinned.

He'd always known New York wouldn’t let him down. 

**Author's Note:**

> hey bec hope you liked it since youre the only one who made it this far down. xoxo


End file.
